Andrew G. McCabe

Early life and career

McCabe was born in 1968. He graduated from The Bolles School in Jacksonville, Florida in 1986. He graduated from Duke University in 1990 and obtained a J.D. degree from Washington University School of Law in 1993. He was also a brother of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. During law school he interned in the criminal division of the United States Department of Justice.

Due to a hiring freeze, McCabe spent three years in a private law practice in Philadelphia before joining the FBI in 1996.

He began his FBI career in the New York Field Office in 1996. While there, he was on the SWAT team. In 2003, he began work as a supervisory special agent at the Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force. Later, McCabe held management positions in the FBI Counterterrorism Division, the FBI National Security Branch and the FBI's Washington Field Office. In 2009, he served as the first director of the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, a program to research interrogation techniques that was created after the Department of Defense Directive 2310 ban of waterboarding and other interrogation techniques. McCabe was part of the investigation of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. McCabe secured the arrest of Ahmed Abu Khattala for suspected involvement in the 2012 Benghazi attack.

Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (2016–2018)

FBI Director James Comey appointed McCabe as deputy director of the FBI on January 29, 2016, and he assumed those duties on February 1, 2016.

On July 31, 2016, the FBI opened their Crossfire Hurricane investigation into whether the Trump campaign was collaborating with the Russian government. Both Comey and McCabe were briefed on the Investigation. After Trump was elected, he also was briefed on the investigation.

In March 2018, it was reported that, upon receiving a referral from Congress in 2017, McCabe had authorized a criminal investigation into whether Sessions had lied to Congress in 2017 about his contacts with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak; the investigation was later closed.

Comey termination

On May 9, 2017, McCabe became acting director of the FBI after Trump dismissed Comey as director. In the absence of a Senate-confirmed director, the deputy director automatically becomes acting director. Statute allows the president to choose an interim FBI director (acting director) outside of the standard order of succession. That process began on May 10, 2017, as Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein interviewed four candidates to serve as interim FBI director. Sessions said that McCabe was "also under consideration". Shortly after Trump fired Comey, McCabe visited the White House for an introductory meeting in the Oval Office with the president, during which time Trump reportedly asked him for whom he had voted in the 2016 election. However, no interim director was named, and McCabe remained as acting director. Christopher A. Wray was ultimately nominated as the new director on June 7, 2017, and confirmed on August 1, 2017, at which point McCabe reverted to his position as deputy director.

In a February 2019 interview with Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes McCabe said that in the days after Comey was fired, he ordered the probe of possible obstruction of justice by Trump, taking action to protect the Russian-interference investigation from successors who might terminate it, because he or Robert Mueller could be removed from their positions. He said "I wanted to make sure that our case was on solid ground and if somebody came in behind me and closed it and tried to walk away from it, they would not be able to do that without creating a record of why they made that decision." McCabe also had concerns about whether Trump "had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests" causing "the highest levels of American law enforcement [to try] to figure out what to do with the president", including the possibility of advocating vice presidential and Cabinet use of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution to have Trump suspended from office, and ultimately removed by Congress. Deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, who had previously been reported but denied having discussed such matters with his colleagues, denied McCabe's assertion as "inaccurate and factually incorrect". McCabe's revelation prompted Senate Judiciary Chairman, Chuck Grassley, to promise investigation of the claims.

Wall Street Journal articles and aftermath

The Wall Street Journal published articles on October 23–24, 2016, regarding an investigation of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server, suggesting that McCabe had a potential conflict of interest caused by donations to his wife's campaign as a Democrat for the Virginia State Senate. On October 24, 2016, the Wall Street Journal reporter emailed an FBI official following up on McCabe's involvement in the FBI's investigation of the Clinton Foundation, which had begun in 2015. Four FBI field offices—New York, Los Angeles, Washington and Little Rock—were pursuing the investigation, with some field agents advocating that it be aggressively continued, while some supervisors and prosecutors believed there was insufficient evidence and that the investigation was too expansive. In July 2016, McCabe decided that the New York FBI office would continue investigating, with assistance from Little Rock. The Wall Street Journal reported that a senior Justice Department official called McCabe to express his disagreement with this decision, with McCabe reportedly asking, "Are you telling me that I need to shut down a validly predicated investigation?" to which the unnamed official replied, "Of course not." The contents of this phone call were included in the follow-up article that was published on October 30, 2016. Although the existence of the FBI's investigation in the Clinton Foundation had been leaked, the FBI up until that point had not officially confirmed the investigation.

In January 2017, the inspector general of the Department of Justice and the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee investigated McCabe over concerns that he should have recused himself from the investigation of the Clinton email scandal. The investigation ceased one year later, in January 2018, with the release of FBI documents showing that McCabe had followed FBI protocol regarding potential conflicts of interest. In 2015, before his wife, Jill McCabe, ran for political office in Virginia, McCabe had notified the FBI about her plans and consulted with the FBI about how he would avoid a conflict of interest. McCabe did not oversee the Clinton email server probe while his wife was running for office, and he was excluded from FBI investigations into public corruption cases in Virginia. According to USA Today, "the internal documents, published on the FBI's website, support what the bureau has asserted previously: that McCabe had no conflicts when he assumed oversight of the Clinton investigation. His role began in February 2016, following his appointment as deputy director and three months after his wife lost her bid for a state Senate seat." However, starting in July 2017 while McCabe was the acting director, Trump repeatedly attacked McCabe in Twitter comments, suggesting that Sessions should dismiss McCabe because of the potential conflicts being investigated, and taunting McCabe about "racing the clock" until his retirement.

Resignation and firing

After meeting with Wray concerning the pending OIG report on the 2016 leaks and a possible demotion, McCabe announced on January 29, 2018, that he was stepping down as deputy director, effective immediately. He then went on paid leave until his scheduled retirement date of March 18, 2018, his 50th birthday, at which point he would be eligible for a retirement pension. McCabe did not lose his entire pension.

On March 14, 2018, it was reported the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility, citing the inspector general's conclusions, had recommended that McCabe be fired, although McCabe had been notified of the recommendation on March 8. According to Office of Personnel Management regulations, McCabe was entitled to a 30-day notice prior to dismissal, but that period could have been shortened to seven days if there is reasonable cause to believe an imprisonable crime was committed. Sessions announced at 10 p.m. on March 16, 2018, that he was taking the recommendation and firing McCabe, eight days after he had been notified of the recommendation to fire him. He cited the inspector general's report, which had not yet been publicly released, saying that "Mr. McCabe had made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor – including under oath – on multiple occasions." McCabe told The New York Times, "The idea that I was dishonest is just wrong. This is part of an effort to discredit me as a witness." It was unclear if Sessions knew at the time he fired McCabe that McCabe had authorized the criminal investigation of him in 2017. McCabe was dismissed less than two days before he would have collected a full early pension for his FBI career. He may have to wait until age 57–62 to begin collecting pension benefits. Trump immediately celebrated on Twitter, saying "Andrew McCabe FIRED, a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI – A great day for Democracy."

On March 17, Democratic Congressman Mark Pocan of Wisconsin offered McCabe a security post in his congressional office. With McCabe short by two days of work for a federal agency to receive his benefits, Pocan said that "Andrew McCabe's firing makes it clear that President Trump is doing everything he can to discredit the FBI and undermine the Special Counsel's investigation" and described his job offer as a "legitimate offer to work on election security". Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Seth Moulton was also reported to be considering offering McCabe a position in his office.

On March 21, 2018, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray stated that McCabe's firing was not politically influenced but done "by the book". Also on March 21, immediately after McCabe's firing, a parallel situation was noted and reported: that just as Jeff Sessions had fired McCabe for lacking "candor", McCabe had, nearly a year previous to his own firing, authorized a criminal investigation into "whether Sessions lacked candor when testifying before Congress about contacts with Russian operatives".

Commentary

In August 2019, McCabe was hired by CNN as contributor, drawing criticism from media critics and conservatives.In August 2020, George Mason University announced McCabe would be joining the faculty of the Schar School of Policy and Government as distinguished visiting professor. In December 2022, shortly after the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith to investigate former Pres. Trump's mishandling of classified documents, McCabe teamed up with podcaster Allison Gill, of Mueller, She Wrote fame, on a new podcast series, Jack, to follow the case. After the Smith investigation ended, McCabe and Gill started UnJustified to follow the actions of the DOJ during Trump's second presidential term.

Personal life

McCabe is married to Jill McCabe, a physician specializing in pediatrics, who was the Democratic candidate for Virginia's 13th Senate District in 2015. They have two children. He is a triathlete who occasionally biked 35 miles (56 km) to work from his home in Ashburn, Virginia. When biking to work, he and his friend would switch off driving while the other biked. The one who did not bike would then drive both home at day's end.

Works

The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump (St. Martin's Press, released February 19, 2019) ISBN 9781250207579